more isn’t always better
In 1987, I got a Macintosh II computer that would support a second display. I was an impecunious pre-med student and couldn’t afford a single color monitor, let alone two. I was getting by with a single monochrome display. I was paying the rent by writing product reviews, and a company sent me a huge (probably 15”) color monitor to assess. I found that having a second monitor was an extreme productivity booster, and found it in the budget to buy one after I’d returned the review unit.
Since then, monitors have gotten bigger and bigger and cheaper and cheaper. For decades now, my favorite configuration is to use a smaller-screen laptop for my primary machine with a large second monitor on my desk at home and work. For most of my career in medicine I actually used a laptop on my lap (horrors!). My setup gave me the best of both worlds: a light and portable machine that didn’t get between me and my patients but with lots of display space when I was coding, writing, or designing.
Two has always been enough. I have occasionally plugged in a third monitor for testing or special applications, but I’ve never experienced the “wow! I gotta have this!” reaction I had when I added a second monitor.
I think the very first Saturday Night Live fake commercial I remember seeing was in the 1970’s. Gillette was heavily promoting their “Trac II” razor. Its innovation was that it had two blades, and the commercials showed a graphic of the first blade tugging on a whisker while the second sheared it off near the skin surface. The SNL sendup ad was “Triple Track: because you’ll believe anything.” I thought it was really funny, and never expected to see a real-life razor with more than two blades. In fact, I figured the two-blade thing was a gimmick that would soon fade.
The razor in my shower right now has five blades.
Still, I’ve been stuck in the 1980s with only two monitors. Lately I have felt cramped a bit, though, particularly because I almost always have a large window showing my Home Assistant status page and I like it to be visible all the time. I thought of setting up another control center like I have in the kitchen, but today I was poking around the garage and realized that I have two small monitors just sitting on a shelf. I have extra HDMI cables, so giving it a try would be pretty simple. In addition, I’m about to embark on a project that will require a monitor and keyboard on my desk anyway, so it seemed like a good time to dust one off and give the three-monitor setup a try.
A few hours in and I’m liking it. I do worry that the salvaged monitor is probably a relatively power-hungry one, perhaps even with a fluorescent backlight. I’ll check its power consumption soon.
nothing so permanent as a temporary fix
On another note, back in January I found a router at the transfer station thrift store for $3. We had a guest staying in the garage loft, and he wanted internet access, so I mounted it on the side of the house and then put a plastic food storage bag over it for weatherization. I eventually modded it to run with power over Ethernet to eliminate the power cord, but it was still an indoor router in a plastic bag hanging off the side of the house. Worse, one of the mounting screws fell out so it was hanging at an angle. Tacky.
After the guest left, we got a freezer in the garage and I also wanted to be able to monitor the level in the catchment tank, both applications that would require internet in the garage, so I left the sketchily mounted router in place.
I’ve had a spare weatherproof plastic box floating around from another project so finally, over ten months later, I got around to putting the router in the box. It looks much better now.
—2p